


The Goner

by hidingmontreal



Series: The Goner [1]
Category: Dunkirk (2017)
Genre: Gibson's Real Name Is Philippe Hugo Guillet, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-29
Updated: 2018-04-29
Packaged: 2019-04-29 22:38:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14482719
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/hidingmontreal/pseuds/hidingmontreal
Summary: Philippe and Tommy's story before, during and after the Dunkirk evacuation. "Like the morning they met, a loud silence settled between them, like they were still too exhausted and weighed down on Dunkirk Beach. Now though, they were unburdened by the sounds of war and although their futures were uncertain, for a moment, Philippe felt weightless."





	The Goner

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! Please drop a comment if you enjoy it :)

A way out of his predicament fell on Philippe's lap several days after he arrived in London. 

Many of the French soldiers evacuated from Dunkirk were being piled back onto ships to join what remained of their army in Normandy. But there were rumours that the war for France was almost over, that surrender was near, that the French president would be forced to sign an armistice with Germany in the coming weeks and that would signal the end of combat for those still fighting for France.

Across the channel, his comrades were still dying and his French government in Vichy was preparing to give up the fight. 

He knew what that would mean for soldiers trapped in German-occupied territory: prisoner of war and labour camps. It would mean spending the rest of the war being forced to help the Germans continue their affront across Europe. Philippe could not repatriate to an unrecognisable France knowing what he knew. He heard the news of soldiers still caught in France, of prisoners of war, of their shooting en masse, of the brutality. 

Those were his options until he heard the rumours that General de Gaulle was being exiled to Britain and would be looking for French soldiers to start a resistance.

As the days passed and he drifted through London in civilian clothes biding his time, no longer pretending to be British, no longer without a voice, he heard the back and forth on the radio and in the newspaper. France was divided. Paris was occupied. With the armistice now signed, the new president was announcing all soldiers needed to give up arms and report to their commanding officers for reassignment. Any French soldier found trying to leave France to join de Gaulle’s resistance would be deemed a deserter. Philippe appreciated the irony.

The day of de Gaulle’s broadcast, seven thousand French soldiers appeared in the streets of London. They were called the Free French Forces and were to help the Allies in the war effort. 

Philippe woke up in Africa in the following months. The new French uniform around his body felt like home.

 

 

Philippe’s weeks in London were both peaceful and anxiety filled. At times he wanted nothing more than to slip into the background and shut his eyes until the war was over. At other times he fantasized about heroism and defeating the Nazis and itched to get back in the field, civilian life seemingly beyond comprehension. However, those parts of him were quiet compared to the terror that screamed at him all the possible ways to die in battle, all the ways he had seen boys and men die.

He thought back to the Dutch trawler with water pouring in from the bullet holes like a garden hose. He remembered the useless urge to hide his head under water when bombs and bullets were hurtling toward him and then, moments later, the hopeless push of his limbs trying to get his head above water, stretching his neck for just a gasp of air against the ocean water that swelled his lungs.

If Tommy hadn't gone back for him, he would have died in the channel with that alien British uniform cradling his body. 

He imagined Tommy, somehow dragging him out of the boat and keeping his lifeless body afloat, pulling it through the viscous black oil to a damned pleasure boat while bombs continued to fall from on high. He imagined Tommy’s wide panicked eyes on him as the pilot in the blue RAF uniform pulled him out of the water and started to perform CPR. Then the retching of salt water, coughing and hacking, until finally Philippe could breathe the salty air again and he opened his eyes and saw Tommy. A brief nod. An imperceptible smile. Cheers from the ever-positive British soldiers, finding a sliver of hope anywhere they could.

Back on dry land, a young nurse had held a stethoscope to his heart, Tommy never too far away, even then. The nurse had spoken to him, questions in a language he couldn’t understand but he could tell she was asking him questions by the intensity of her gaze. Tommy had appeared closer then and spoke to the nurse in his deep, murmuring voice. 

Philippe's mother had been a nurse in the Great War, had met his father that way before he died in that same war two years later leaving his pregnant mother to raise him alone. He found himself watching the nurse as she spoke to Tommy with an intensity that made him certain she was good at her job, unflappable like his mother had been. The nurse caught him looking then and he smiled sheepishly as he looked around at the wounded soldiers. 

There hadn’t been too many very badly wounded on that side of the channel yet. Most of the wounded hadn’t made it that far, Philippe realized. There had been several burns, broken limbs, some flesh wounds, but no one seemed to have any profound trauma.

Philippe had stood up then and nodded to the nurse dismissively as she tried to get him to sit back down. He's fine, he had thought, he doesn't need this fuss. Others needed her more than him.

He had heard French speakers then, not far off from the medical tent and followed a loud commanding voice until he was behind a crowd of green French uniforms. They were being told the train would take them to London where they should await further instruction. Tommy had appeared beside him again, his hair still looked wet from the dirt and oil in it. He looked questioningly at Philippe and asked him something.

“Londres.” It's all the information Philippe could supply but Tommy had nodded.

“London.”

 

 

Before London there was Woking.

Philippe stayed in makeshift lodging in a gymnasium with a hundred other soldiers including Tommy, Alex and the highlander named Jamie who had been in the sinking trawler with them and thus knew his secret too. In a way it was a relief that he didn’t need to lie to the three of them but truthfully, he didn’t trust anyone except Tommy.

On the train platform the night of the evacuation, waiting for the train to carry them out of Weymouth, Tommy had fought in sharp, frustrated whispers with Alex and the highlander all night. Philippe had no way of arguing for himself other than to fix them with a challenging stare. The two rarely met his gaze but when they did, they seemed properly chastised and together with Tommy, they seemed to convince his countrymen to keep Philippe’s secret.

On the short train ride to Woking they all slept and then stumbled out into the bright morning sun when they arrived to cheers and claps on the back from Tommy’s countrymen and countrywomen. Philippe kept close to the group of French soldiers, craning his head for any scrap of news.

The four of them scarfed down some sandwiches before Alex and Jamie headed tiredly toward their lodging to pass out while Philippe and Tommy wandered toward the fields of yellow mustard.

It was in that shocking quiet of the British countryside where Philippe finally spoke again, a day and a half since the Dutch trawler.

“Je m’appelle Philippe Guillet,” is what he had to say. 

Tommy kept his eyes on his feet in front of him as they walked but Philippe saw a smile creep up the corner of his mouth.

“Philippe,” he whispered, testing it. “I’m Tommy Hillstead.”

Philippe grabbed Tommy's hand and stopped walking as the younger man turned to him, curious.

Philippe let go of his hand but fixed his eyes on Tommy’s blue ones and said quietly, “Je te dois la vie, Tommy Hillstead.” _I owe you my life._

Tommy stared at him, shaking his head and Philippe didn't know if he was denying it or couldn't understand what he was saying but he pressed on anyway. 

“Je te remercie.”

Tommy seemed to comprehend what he was being thanked for then.

“Je me croyais foutu.” _I thought I was a goner._

Tommy shook his head. “I thought I had lost you,” were the words Philippe could not understand but he heard the perceptible crack in Tommy’s voice and saw the moisture in his eyes and they watched each other a long moment, visions from Bray Dunes triggered easily. Flashes of that same palpable tension when their eyes locked on the beach, huddling together. Then, suddenly, bombs raining, the ground shaking, the smell of gunpowder.

His heart started to beat rapidly, thumping uncomfortably in his chest, and his body was screaming to him to drop flat on the ground but he still had half his wits to realize there was no threat there in the countryside with Tommy in front of him on an empty gravel road stretching quiet and empty to the horizon.

Tommy was in his space then, a hand cupping his jaw, drawing Philippe’s reluctant eyes up to his own. Tommy leaned in slowly, eyes drifting shut and then they kissed, not too chaste but over too quick all the same. Tommy peered around them belatedly but it was still just the two of them under the warm sun.

 

 

When they arrived in London, the four of them shared a room in a lodge and received new uniforms, immediately taking turns to shower. Alex disappeared afterward but returned after an hour with a small stack of civilian clothes. He offered it to Philippe with a sheepish shrug and Philippe took the pile delicately from him before realizing what it meant. He collided with Alex in an ambush embrace that drew a grunt from the younger man and garnered a laugh from Tommy and Jamie. 

He headed to the bathroom for a quick, well-deserved shower and gratefully washed away the oil and dirt and changed out of the BEF uniform. The civilian clothes felt strangely soft and light on his body. He curled his fingers tightly around the dog tags that read _Andrew J. Gibson_ , silently thanking the soldier who he had buried in the sand.

When he emerged from the bathroom, Alex and Jamie had already gone but Tommy was there, looking clean and handsome with his new pressed uniform and dry tamed hair. His eyes were fixed on Philippe.

Philippe approached and pressed Gibson’s dog tags into Tommy’s palm, trusting him to get them where they belonged. Tommy nodded and placed the tags in his breast pocket before saying something rushed and breathy. Then, like it was the most natural thing he could do, he pressed up against Philippe and walked him backward onto the bed until he was hovering over him. Their lips connected and what followed was awkward and perfect and would conjure unrestrained smiles for years to come.

They dressed afterward, quick and quiet, an echo of their first meeting on the beach when Philippe was just getting into Gibson’s uniform and Tommy stumbled into his life, dishevelled and breathless, from beyond the dune. 

Over a week had passed since he had crossed the Dunkirk perimeter and Philippe could recall that day and the events leading up to that decision. He had known that every step he took through the cobbled streets toward the beach was a step over surrendered territory. 

At the time, the future had seemed bleak. The day was getting darker and the harsh rain was seeping into his boots. They had slowly retreated to the coast for weeks, the Germans relentless in their attacks. They were cornered and outnumbered and Philippe had just found himself in an argument with his commander about the decision to surrender. As scared as he was, something told him that surrendering was not going to help him or any of the men in his unit stay alive and he had been right. He had disobeyed, knowing full well the gravity of that decision, and hid. He had watched as the three men remaining from his unit raised their hands in surrender. The German soldiers had slowly lowered their weapons and had the three men turn around and kneel and Philippe had watched helplessly as the German soldiers sprayed bullets into their backs. 

He ran all night and all day then, meeting Allied soldiers on their way to Calais. When they heard Calais had been surrendered, they changed their course to Dunkirk. They ran, they hid, they died, they killed Nazi soldiers along the way, until miraculously he reached the French perimeter, alone again.

Then he saw the British and French soldiers lined up along the beach and heard the British lieutenant shouting, “English only! Anglais seulement!” 

He had made a decision then and it was this decision that brought Tommy to him. It was this decision that let him find his courage in the most unexpected place on Dunkirk Beach. And it was sitting next to Tommy on the bed after they dressed and hearing Tommy’s deep voice murmur to him in that cryptic tongue that made him unable to regret any of the decisions that led him to that point.

They traced skin and they spoke softly, a constant string of murmurs though they knew the words died in the space between them. 

“Il faut repartir.” _We have to go back._

The sky was indigo in the small window and the room was cast in shadows but for a small square of twilight that flickered on the wall next to the bunk.

“When this is over, maybe we can start over.”

Tommy was expressive, used his hands to gesture wildly to make up for the language barrier and Philippe tried to decipher the movements but found himself laughing hopelessly, shaking his head, which only made Tommy’s facial expressions and gestures more ridiculous. Still, they learned several things about each other in that way, forced to breakdown their lives to the simplest of gestures making it seem insignificant in a way that wasn’t hopeless but carefree. As they grew tired, Tommy pressed into the crook of Philippe’s neck and breathed slowly, kissing him there before he shifted to the other bunk.

Like the morning they met, a loud silence settled between them, like they were still too exhausted and weighed down on Dunkirk Beach. Now though, they were unburdened by the sounds of war and although their futures were uncertain, for a moment, Philippe felt weightless.

 

 

The following day, another train platform, that was where Tommy left him, heading north for reassignment. Their goodbye wasn’t sentimental, wasn’t drawn out and they didn't make any promises. Perhaps they didn't have the time or the place, perhaps they weren't strong enough, perhaps they both knew the odds. Maybe Philippe could only be grateful for that.

Their train pulled away and Alex and Jamie had leaned out the window, waving him goodbye. Tommy did no such thing. And then they were gone and he was left there with his vision blurring and only the wind to remind him of Tommy’s smile against his cheek.

 

 

In the following four years, across the Mediterranean, Philippe joined thousands of soldiers from the French colonies in assaults against Italian territory. Sometimes they were successful, other times they failed. At times they held out in the blazing, mirage-filled desert for months at a time, water rations low, not a shower in months, other times he found himself aiming his weapon at soldiers in Vichy French uniforms and he didn't know if any of it made sense anymore. He had a sinking feeling that the machinations of war were stringing him along like a marionette doll. 

Through it all he managed to survive while others didn't. All of them young men, fighting a battle that wasn't theirs. He fought in Algeria, in Egypt, in Libya -- years of dehydration with only bullets and bombs raining on him and he was awarded promotions just for staying alive through the carnage. 

Then, that was suddenly over and he was pinned with some medal and told he was to invade France. In France at least, the war might make more sense.

 

 

In all that time, he wondered often if Tommy was safe. He wasn’t, of course. London had been attacked, British soldiers were spread out across the world even farther than the Free French, but was Tommy alive? 

In the first few weeks back in a war zone he thought his heart would give out between the very real fear of dying and the palpable longing he felt in his chest, a feeling he hadn't known before and he wondered morosely if it was love, that clenching feeling like a tight fist around his heart every time he thought about Tommy. His livelihood required he become extremely pragmatic, however. Soon, his hands stopped shaking before the invasions. He learned how to create a numbness inside himself, like a piece of grinding machinery. He learned how to follow orders even when that meant running into a stream of bullets or gunning down a man that wasn't a man at all, but a child. And during the nights, before he fell into a restless sleep, he thought of Tommy and then the grinding machinery of his soul and the adrenaline that constantly lubricated them there would soften and melt. 

As time slipped by, he grasped desperately at the threads of his memory for the sensation of Tommy’s eyes on him, his hands, his lips, his breath, his presence. He craved the full picture of their time together but for every moment that passed the memories seemed to unravel further until he wondered if he would even recognize the man if he ever did see him again. Time had made his memories threadbare and his future a tangled web. 

He looked for Tommy in the faces of the men in British uniforms he met along the way but it was never him. And part of what made him keep pushing to stay alive after so many years of exhaustion and fear was the anticipation. He had spent so much of his time growing up repressing any feelings he had that were out of the ordinary, afraid of what they meant, unwilling to indulge them, that he felt the void of them now. He had been thrown into war and that had helped put things in perspective. It was there he had met Tommy who had conjured in him a sense of carelessness and anticipation and it was there he finally felt he could indulge in it. After all, what could be the harm in it now, in this war-torn place, if it gave him a reason to fight?

 

 

On an August morning, he found himself back in France. It was raining and the contrast to his four years in northern Africa was mesmerizing. He had forgotten the mossy smell of a damp city. 

In France, he was back to fighting Nazis directly and it did make sense after all. 

When his division made it to Paris, to his home before the war ravaged it – they were greeted by thousands of Parisians in the streets cheering. Their liberation had finally come and Philippe found it easy to smile and laugh with the crowds he fondly recognized as his countrymen and countrywomen. It felt like a neat ending to a messy and complex story.

And the war finally did end for him, a few weeks later, when he found himself remembering the colour of Tommy's eyes for the first time in months, as he lay face up on the ground, looking at the vast blue of the French sky before it all went dark.

 

 

Sleep invited him in so persuasively that Philippe found it difficult to focus even as flashes of consciousness cut through his dream. In his dream, he saw Tommy leaning over him, his eyes hardened and mouth twisted in a grimace. Then Tommy and the dream escaped him and he was slapped gently on the cheek and he heard an Englishman with a deep voice shouting his name. 

“Philippe! Philippe! Wake up, Philippe! Can you open your eyes?” 

The voice was distraught and so familiar but Philippe slipped into the dream again, the pull of it heavy like gravity and he heard Tommy calling his name from afar. 

He felt a shake in his body and consciousness called him back and somehow Tommy was there like a vision. 

Around him the dust was settling. The smell of artillery fire was heavy in the air and there were shouts and chaos all around. 

Philippe felt a wrenching pain in his abdomen and he heard himself saying Tommy’s name aloud. He didn’t know when he started speaking but the movement made the pain worse. He tasted copper and heard the name choke out of his mouth. Sleep seemed to swallow him in again but Tommy’s presence felt so urgent, he tried to fight it. 

Hands clutched at his abdomen and he felt the painful pressure of it. 

“You’re all right,” he heard Tommy say, “Just stay with me.” The hallucination tore his eyes away and Philippe watched him shout behind him, “Need a medic!”

Philippe watched clouds drift by against the blue sky, impossibly fast. 

Sleep invited him in once again, uncompromising. The pain muted and Philippe found himself walking alone in a dream, the thundering of waterfall audible but not visible. In the distance, something luminous called to him and he walked toward it.

 

 

He was floating, the water around him black as night. It was quiet and calm for the first time in years, not even the Earth’s tectonic wars could reach him. 

He greeted the solitude like an old friend, saw a younger version of himself flash before his eyes, ears too big for his head, crying for his mother as he curled up in her deathbed.

The woman was before him now, dark hair like tendrils falling around her shoulders. She was transcendent in a dress that matched her grey-green eyes. His eyes. 

She told him without words how well he had done, how proud she was of him. Tears didn't threaten her eyes like they did his but he blinked them away.

"Est-il fini?” he asked. _Is it over?_

She thought for a moment and shook her head.

 _Soon_.

 

 

He was aware of the hushed voices and the sounds of rainfall before his eyes drifted open. Philippe smelled something chemical and his eyes struggled to see in the dim lamplight. He scanned the room. The bodies of wounded men occupied three rows of cots in a medical tent. He watched a nurse adjusting the IV bag of the soldier next to him before his eyes landed on a man he recognized standing a safe distance away. 

The man seemed paler now and more slight, his cheeks slightly hollow behind the dirt. His skin was covered in beads of sweat and his hair looked familiarly greasy but the smile that tugged at his mouth provoked a rush of feeling in Philippe that made him painfully aware of his injury.

“Hey,” said Tommy.

“Hey,” was Philippe’s strained reply.

“How are you feeling?”

“Okay,” he lied. Philippe ignored the twinge of pain as he spoke, instead he tried to formulate the questions that threatened to spew out in a fury. What happened? Where was he? Why was Tommy here? Why was he across the room? They were closer than they'd been in years and yet he seemed so distant. 

“Do you remember what happened?”

 _Everything_ , Philippe thought but shook his head.

“I saw you in Lille. Couldn’t believe it at first. Thought it was my eyes playing tricks on me,” Tommy gave a mirthless laugh, “Then snipers started up. I thought you were a goner.”

Philippe felt morphine flood his system, numbing the pain. 

“Me too.”

“But you’re okay,” Tommy said and he took a step closer, his eyes wide and burdened, locked onto Philippe's. “You’ve no idea how good it is to see you,” Tommy knelt down next to him then and traced a curl of Philippe's hair with his finger. 

Philippe leaned into it, closing his eyes and letting a sigh escape him and without meaning to, tears as well. As tears spilled over, he realized he never expected to see Tommy again. They had left each other without saying goodbye and without any real way of reconnecting. Yet, against all odds, Tommy was there with his hand squeezing tightly around his own and Philippe was so overwhelmed with relief that he couldn't begin to tell him how good it was to see him too.

Tommy held Philippe’s hand up to his mouth and placed a quick kiss there before straightening up and looking around the room. It must have been the middle of the night. Everyone was asleep or pretending to be and the nurses were out of sight.

“How are you feeling really?” Tommy asked again.

Philippe wiped the tears from his eyes and shrugged, “It hurts.”

Tommy nodded and limped over to the empty cot opposite Philippe’s, “They say you’ll be okay.” 

Philippe finally noticed the crutch the younger man was leaning on and the dry blood that covered the front of his uniform. Philippe felt panic flood over him like a wave, everything was out of focus and he opened and closed his mouth but Tommy read his mind.

“I’m okay. It’s just a scratch,” he said and then gestured to the dried blood, “This is yours.” 

He smiled weakly and Philippe nodded, disturbed by the thought. He tried to wade through his memories but felt disoriented, couldn’t place them in any order that made sense and he felt a gaping hole grow among them. Tommy said he had been in Lille, but Philippe hadn’t been to Lille since he was eighteen and penniless. In his chest, his heart rate refused to calm and it thumped against his rib cage like a war drum.

“Philippe?” he heard Tommy say but he was distant, safe outside the furious well of water Philippe now drowned in.

 _Soon_ , an echo called. 

_Soon_.

 

 

In the days following the attack, Philippe fought the memories in his dreams. In them, the impact of the bullets pushed Philippe back to the streets of Lille and startled him awake. When he woke, panting, Tommy had been there to catch his breath.

There in the dim light under the medical tent, Philippe let Tommy fill in the gaps in his memories.

Tommy told him how he had spotted Philippe in Lille, moments before the ambush. He told him how a couple of German snipers hiding in the rowhouses overhead had fired onto the open streets and sprayed their bullets into Philippe and the rest of his unit. He told him how he had dragged him out of the street and into a ditch where he held him as he lost a lot of blood, drifting in and out of consciousness. Tommy told him how he had felt the warm blood squeeze through his fingers as he tried to stem the flow. Tommy was scared, had felt useless. He couldn’t take the pain away as Philippe repeated his name over and over again, gripping his arm as though it were a life raft. 

Tommy hadn’t held back on any of the details and Philippe didn’t want him to. 

Soon, American artillery had blown up the apartment – the one the snipers had used as a vantage point – into nothing. As the dust settled, Philippe drifted off and wouldn’t come to. 

His unit’s combat medic told Tommy it was over but he didn’t listen. Instead he screamed at him to get him plasma and the white powder he'd seen other men treated with. Then they got the bleeding man onto a stretcher before they ran the three kilometres to the nearest triage station. 

Though the scene was familiar, Tommy told him, the feeling was different from that of Dunkirk. In Dunkirk, they had run through the soft sand and pushed their way through hundreds of soldiers as bombs fell around them. In Dunkirk, the stretcher held only a stranger, a ticket out of there. In Dunkirk, Philippe had worn his defiance like a mask, Tommy never saw any fear. In Lille, however, running through the abandoned cobbled streets, Tommy said it was quiet. In Lille, the stretcher held not a stranger but Philippe, and his mask had been shredded. All that was left was Philippe’s wide open fear.

At the triage station, Philippe was in surgery in minutes. Tommy had been soaked in Philippe’s blood and remembered the sick smell of it. Once the adrenaline faded, once Philippe was out of his hands, he couldn’t stand upright, the untreated shrapnel wound in his leg finally caught up to him. It was blood poisoning, Tommy was told, and suddenly the sweats, the chills, the vomiting, the exhaustion didn’t seem like ordinary side effects of war.

The war was over for them after that. 

 

 

In the following days they were transferred to a field hospital in the outskirts of Paris. 

They spoke softly and hesitantly, seemingly afraid that the other may evaporate into nothing if too much was said or taken for granted. 

Instead of saying what he wanted to, Philippe dropped breadcrumbs, “I have no one waiting for me here.”

In the city where Philippe had grown up, he recognized the streets but not himself. 

“France doesn't feel like home.”

Home was Tommy and the gentle way he told him his plans, hesitant as though Philippe may consider letting him go again. Neither acknowledged that wasn't an option. 

It wasn’t France Philippe had been fighting for.

One morning, as injured soldiers continued to trickle in and out of the field hospital, Tommy gathered up the courage to blurt out, “Come back with me.”

So Philippe did.

 

 

On an autumn day in London, Philippe spent the morning in bed. 

The sun flooded his bedroom and Philippe awoke squinting at the rays of sun. Philippe perched himself up, careful not to wake the black schnauzer sleeping soundly at the foot of the bed. 

In the kitchen, he set the tea kettle to boil and opened a window as the kettle rumbled softly. It was a sunny morning but Philippe smelled the impending rain in the air and watched as large drops began splattering the sun-soaked pavement. 

A group of adolescents passed loudly under the apartment window and he watched a young boy pretend to aim and cock an invisible rifle at his mate who mimed getting shot, spontaneously falling to the ground as the others burst into laughter. It was surreal, catching the scene innocuously re-enacted by children.

Philippe made two cups of tea then headed back to the bedroom, placing one teacup on his bedside and the other on Tommy's before leaning over and whispering, “Tea’s ready, mon amour.”

Tommy groaned and wrapped an arm around him, pulling him back into bed before promptly falling back to sleep, tucked into Philippe's side.

Philippe thought of the adolescents playing their make-believe wars. It made him think of his mother though he didn't know why and he laughed a little. He grabbed a book and began reading quietly, listening to the schnauzer snore softly at his feet. 

In another hour or so he and Tommy would dress and walk their dog through the quiet streets of north London, but right then they were free to lay still and rest.

Philippe followed the words on the page.


End file.
